A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Firozabad district has sentenced nine people to between 10 and 20 years in prison for their involvement in the trafficking of 441 kg of ganja seized from a truck in November 2021, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) said in a press release on Saturday.
The contraband was allegedly concealed in a specially created cavity inside the driver’s cabin. Truck driver Pankaj Sharma and co-driver Rinku Sharma were arrested on the spot. The additional district and sessions judge, Firozabad, sentenced the nine accused on September 25. The alleged kingpin, Yashpal Singh of Aligarh, got the maximum punishment of 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment (RI) and a ₹ 2 lakh fine, according to the NCB Lucknow zonal unit. The case dates back to November 4, 2021, when Shikohabad police in Firozabad intercepted a truck and seized 441 kg of ganja, according to the NCB.
The NCB said its subsequent investigation established that the consignment was coming from Gajapati district of Odisha and was being transported to Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh.
Assets and properties worth ₹ 32.12 lakh belonging to the convicts were traced and frozen by the competent authority in 2024, it said. The case was later taken over by the NCB, which arrested seven more accused during its investigation. They were identified as Vipin Pandit alias Vipin Sharma, Niraj Gupta, Yashpal Singh, Neeraj Saini, Vivek, Shishupal and Neeraj Kumar alias Bittu.
Neeraj Saini had taken the truck on lease, according to the agency. The NCB said the investigation also included a financial probe into the alleged trafficking network.
